There is a time and place for walls, of course, and groups can benefit from a clear understanding of who their audience is. All I am saying is that we shouldn't rely on a single solution, whether it is Facebook or Sharepoint or something else, and neither should we continue to assume that providing a single space for all of the activities to take place in is the right way forward. I often ask why there are ten Becta approved solutions that all replicate each other and also attempt to provide similar tools to those freely available elsewhere. I realise the ten products do differ, but they all do the same thing, ultimately. They all adhere to a set of functional specifications and therefore basically all follow a broadly similar metaphor.
My point is, why should they? Do we continue to accept the notion that a single space, replicating other spaces, is the right thing to do, or do we look at those other spaces and see how we can leverage them in a far more fluid way?
I readily accept the argument about audience and I am not suggesting we remove all walls... but lower them a tad! There will always be a need for personal and private spaces, as our work in Ultraversity began to show. I am simply questioning the need to create a single place for all of that to happen when there are multiple places available, each of which is probably more engaging.
Schools without walls? No, but why continue to bring large numbers of students into one campus to learn when there are fantastic opportunities elsewhere which we could use? Is it not an organisational thing, rooted in the past? Why follow a model aligned to the agricultural year? We are caught in a number of systems which will take considerable effort and acceptance by large numbers of people to change. In the end we have to ask if it is worth changing them, or simply continue to refine and re-define ways of using them. I vote for taking on the hard work... :-)
As you might tell, I am no longer a fan of a three term year, either!
But I have a suspicion that you know these arguments all too well. The interesting thing is which side of them do you sit?
Hal
There is a time and place for walls, of course, and groups can benefit from a clear understanding of who their audience is. All I am saying is that we shouldn't rely on a single solution, whether it is Facebook or Sharepoint or something else, and neither should we continue to assume that providing a single space for all of the activities to take place in is the right way forward. I often ask why there are ten Becta approved solutions that all replicate each other and also attempt to provide similar tools to those freely available elsewhere. I realise the ten products do differ, but they all do the same thing, ultimately. They all adhere to a set of functional specifications and therefore basically all follow a broadly similar metaphor.
My point is, why should they? Do we continue to accept the notion that a single space, replicating other spaces, is the right thing to do, or do we look at those other spaces and see how we can leverage them in a far more fluid way?
I readily accept the argument about audience and I am not suggesting we remove all walls... but lower them a tad! There will always be a need for personal and private spaces, as our work in Ultraversity began to show. I am simply questioning the need to create a single place for all of that to happen when there are multiple places available, each of which is probably more engaging.
Schools without walls? No, but why continue to bring large numbers of students into one campus to learn when there are fantastic opportunities elsewhere which we could use? Is it not an organisational thing, rooted in the past? Why follow a model aligned to the agricultural year? We are caught in a number of systems which will take considerable effort and acceptance by large numbers of people to change. In the end we have to ask if it is worth changing them, or simply continue to refine and re-define ways of using them. I vote for taking on the hard work... :-)
As you might tell, I am no longer a fan of a three term year, either!
But I have a suspicion that you know these arguments all too well. The interesting thing is which side of them do you sit?